Professor Padhraic Smyth will lead UCI’s five-year project, which is part of the National Science Foundation Research Traineeship program.

A UCI team led by Padhraic Smyth, professor of computer science and director of the UCI Data Science Initiative, is one of 16 interdisciplinary groups to share $47 million awarded as part of the National Science Foundation Research Traineeship program. Co-Principal Investigators on this award are Pierre Baldi (Computer Science), Jim Randerson (Earth System Science), Maritza Salazar (Merage School of Business), and Daniel Whiteson (Physics and Astronomy). UCI will receive $2.9 million, primarily in the form of graduate student fellowships, to develop “team science for integrative graduate training in data science and physical science.” The Research Traineeship program was established to encourage the creation and implementation of bold, potentially transformative models for graduate education in science, technology, engineering and math. UCI’s five-year project is expected to include more than 60 master’s and Ph.D. students. “This is an exciting opportunity for UCI,” Smyth said. “We will be training a new generation of researchers in the latest advances from the fields of machine learning and computational statistics, enabling them to be future leaders in data-driven scientific research in areas such as astronomy, particle physics, chemistry and Earth science.”

This story was originally published on the UCI News website.